Reality checks

News blues

According to Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the way we were thinking about transmission of Covid-19 - surfaces, large respiratory droplets – “was missing the point”.

Two-plus years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you probably know the basics of protection: vaccines, boosters, proper handwashing and masks. But one of the most powerful tools against the coronavirus is one that experts believe is just starting to get the attention it deserves: ventilation.
If you're indoors, you could be breathing in less fresh air than you think.
"Everybody in a room together is constantly breathing air that just came out of the lungs of other people in that room. And depending on the ventilation rate, it could be as much as 3% or 4% of the air you're breathing just came out of the lungs of other people in that room," Allen said.
He describes this as respiratory backwash.
"Normally, that's not a problem, right? We do this all the time. We're always exchanging our respiratory microbiomes with each other. But if someone's sick and infectious ... those aerosols can carry the virus. That's a problem."

Read “This invisible Covid-19 mitigation measure is finally getting the attention it deserves” >> 

***

U.S. universities nationwide reinstate mask mandates amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases >> 

***

On war…

Photo essay >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

© UN FAO

It’s one thing to live in the bubble associated with “modern” life: a cozy fire on cold and wet days, contradictions of ideology alongside the need for physical safety, a functional security system, a vehicle for trips to the grocery store, and so many other taken-for-granted conveniences that allow one to view others’ struggles from a distance.
It’s uncomfortable to look outside the bubble for reminders of what life is like for the planet’s vast majority.
Yesterday, in front of the fire, when I looked outside the bubble, I learned how my late mother’s former staff and their families struggle for a semblance of comfort. This, alongside world news reporting dire events affecting peoples’ day-to-day lives:

• Flooding: Zululand, South Africa (see photos of my flooded garden, below). Ramshackle houses around KZN buckle under constant rainfall. Australia 
• Drought: southern Africa  (Eswatini is former Swaziland), Afghanistan, Iran 
• Fire: southern Europe and western US 
• Famine: Yemen 
• Food shortages:

  “On March 24, 2022, President Biden warned of food shortages due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It’s going to be real,” he said of food shortages. “The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia; it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country [US] as well. Both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat…just to give one example.”

  In truth, it’s not only Russia causing food shortages; a badly managed pandemic and simple lack of care for our world’s most vulnerable are included. Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Peru , South Africa,
• War: Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic
• Xenophobia: South Africa  and “deadly denial” 
• Pandemic hotspots: China, Washington, DC and think of the effects of the ‘claw back’ of $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort that the US had previously proposed .

Personal reality check: Back in August 2020, I described the son of my mother’s faithful domestic worker threatening to kill me.  Back then, guided by prescience, I stated, “I’m tempted to write, “finished and klaar” but nothing really is, is it?”
While I’m currently no longer harassed by that man, he continues to wander, always drunk, around this neighborhood, harassing his fellow humans; retaliation has put him in the hospital more than once. Now, I learn his sister – whom I’d always thought married a decent, hardworking man – married a hardworking but regularly drunk man who spends his earnings on maintaining a constant level of alcohol in his bloodstream. His desperate wife, ironically named Happiness, begs money to purchase food for her three children – and one grandchild. Her oldest daughter, 13, is a mother, too.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Yesterday, former president Jacob Zuma was due back in the Pietermaritzburg court. Last year when he was to appear in court, Gauteng and KZN were wracked by riots. (It was during that time, July 12, although not related to the protests and riots, that my mother passed away peacefully.)
Today’s Zuma-related concern?
Our faithful domestic worker begins her first fulltime holiday since the beginning of the pandemic. She will take a taxi to Pietermaritzburg, then a bus ride for 30 km to her home in a rural village.
Alas, the courthouse is around the corner from the taxi rank and bus station.
Worrisome.
Heavy rainfall, flooding predicted, and possible riots and/or protests associated with Zuma’s trial.
Bon voyage?
As it turned out, no serious protests and Zuma’s trail postponed, yet again.
Flooding, however, continues.

Writing this, the sun is yet to rise so I can’t yet see the extent of flooding in the garden. Given constant rainfall during the night, and the blocked culverts, I assume yesterday’s photos indicate continued flooding of the lower lawn.